


NOT SO FAINTLY AFTER ALL

by Cerulean_Spork



Series: Shatterdome Heldensagen [2]
Category: Der Ring des Nibelungen | The Ring of the Nibelung - Wagner, My Little Pony: Friendship is Magic, Pacific Rim (2013), Queen (Band), Star Trek: The Next Generation, The Princess - Alfred Lord Tennyson
Genre: Angst and Humor, Gen, its a war epic vignette i mean rly, not actually a crossover
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-09-08
Updated: 2013-09-08
Packaged: 2017-12-26 00:48:41
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 16,266
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/959607
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Cerulean_Spork/pseuds/Cerulean_Spork
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The Jaeger Academy is not Starfleet's, nor is it Battle School -- but tubas are still not allowed in the Shatterdome</p>
            </blockquote>





	NOT SO FAINTLY AFTER ALL

**MR BECKET, DO YOU THINK I WAS BORN YESTERDAY?**  
 **I KNOW WHAT A SOUSAPHONE IS AND NO IT IS NOT,**  
 **I REPEAT NOT, THAT IS N-O-T, NOT AN ACCEPTABLE**  
 **ALTERNATIVE TO A TUBA. PLEASE DO NOT TRY THIS AGAIN.**  
 **HAVE I MADE MYSELF SUFFICIENTLY CLEAR YET?**

**_lol geez sir u dont haf2 yell was worth a try :-)_ **

Marshal Pentecost of the Pan Pacific Defense Corps stared at his computer screen and the small blinking window in the corner of it with the latest communique from half of the team responsible for keeping an ever-growing alien menace off the beaches of half North America's western coastline, and clasped his hands very, very firmly together.

The Becket brothers had curbed him of the habit of putting his hand over his eyes **very** quickly in their acquaintance, ever since the two new cadets were brought up again for some impossibly bizarre infraction or another -- who would have thought to remap the simulator graphics display so that all the Kaiju were cartoon ponies from that old kids' TV show? Who would have thought that the Beckets, **either** of them, would have been up to hacking of that level in the first place?

That they answered at once that this was a very easy exploit, and had just ripped it off of an old video they saw online, didn't really help -- but they didn't usually snort when being dressed-down, they were usually quite **apologetic** when caught causing trouble.

"Sorry, SIr," the elder Becket said penitently, "it just, you reminded us of--"

"Captain Picard," his junior chimed in, biting his cheek hard and rocking a little on his heels, apparently suppressing a fit of the sort too familiar from lectures, meaning he had thought of something tangentially related to the subject at hand and was bursting with desire to share it with everyone, right this very instant. Muffled squeaks were no doubt **closely** following.

Generally speaking, being compared to Captain Jean-Luc Picard of the USS _Enterprise_ wasn't a **bad** thing, among serving military officers the world over -- it was a **very** good way of weeding out who you'd like to have a drink with, **or** at your back, if they were Team Picard or Team Kirk, and always had been. (It also helped by weeding out those who were too sophisticated for anyone's good and thought it made them **cool** to sneer at comrades who still watched "those silly science-fiction shows," like the ones who sneered at reading "childrens' books, _ **really?")**_

But unfortunately, like everyone else with an internet connection pre-War, he'd seen all those GIFs too, and knew **exactly** what they were thinking of.

And **now** he couldn't even facepalm at the realization...

"Oh!" Yancy started and elbowed his technically-younger sibling. _ **"Riker!"** _ they both finished, and reached for the office chairs standing to either side of them.

 **"GENTLEMEN!"** the Marshal barked, before things could degenerate further, and they snapped back upright with guilty looks. "Cadet Becket, Cadet Becket, do you imagine I called you in to discuss Star Trek?"

They looked at each other uncertainly, as if this were a trick question.

"Um... **no,** Sir?"

_**And on these two minds, very likely, depends the salvation of a continent, or half of one at least!** _

"You were going to yell at us for hacking the simulator, right?"

"No. I was about to **ask** you, why on earth did you **do** it?" he asked, bewildered as to what could have incentivized such effort from two students who had only had the most mediocre of scores in their high school programming classes. He could quite well see the two of them thinking, "But what if the Kaiju were all ponies instead?" and being tickled at the notion, but he'd **checked** , the hack **wasn't** that easy to replicate and scaling it up convincingly had to have taken them quite a lot of time and trouble, which had to be the reason he hadn't had any reports of them getting into trouble -- or mere mischief even -- since the Great Dirt Clod War during Summer Term.

"Because they deserved it!" Yancy exclaimed, his eyes narrowing in righteous indignation.

"Yeah!"

"The Kaiju? The **simulator?"** Pentecost wondered when he'd gone through the Looking Glass without noticing.

"The Celestians!"

 **"What--"** and then stopped, at a complete and total loss for words -- and then realized he'd just gone and made that old text-emoji in realspace, and that he was about to put his hand to the bridge of his nose, and gripped his knucklebones till the skin over them went beige instead,  wondering at the fact that Jaeger Academy cadets in general and these two in particular could do things to his blood pressure that no Kaiju **ever** had.

 **"Please** begin at the beginning and go on **until** you come to the end," he said through his teeth, and braced himself for what came next.

He eventually worked out that they had been **irritated** with a faction of cadets calling themselves "Celestial Warriors," because they were annoying little pricks "which is **not** a word we prefer in the Corps, am I **right** , gentlemen?" who didn't just think they were better than everyone else for following the Princess--

"Wait. **Stop**. You're telling me they actually **believe** in Celestia? It's not a **joke?"** at which the Beckets exchanged blank looks and shrugged. Evidently this cadre **acted** as if they did, and so the image became the deed became the thing itself for all that mattered. But the problem was their **interpretation** of the principles embraced and promoted by the story, according to them.

"So this is a **holy war?** Gentlemen, you **know** that matters of belief are private and sacrosanct, in the Corps. You **don't** mock someone's faith, **even if you doubt** that it's sincerely held, or if you have theological disagreements. **\--If you think they're wrong,"** he added, just to make sure.

Oh, they didn't care about that, they assured him. "Hey, if they wanna see her as Lawful Stupid, that's **their** problemo," Yancy declared magnanimously, with an exasperated arm wave. "But when--"

"It's when they start picking on people for minor infractions and going and reporting them when it's Not Their Job, it's not--"

"--Not in the **spirit** of Ponydom," they finished together.

The field training he was receiving at this time would later serve him very **well** when dealing with heads-of-state and high government officials, because it both inured him to hearing the most ridiculous things said quite sincerely, and forced him to pick at the meanings behind the gibberish instead of thinking "Bloody **hell,** they don't **really** believe a word of what they're saying, do they?" and getting **stuck** there. (It would also serve as useful experience when he was wrangling what was left ofKaiju Science after the budget cuts and inevitable, if reluctant, defections.)

At the moment, he had no reason to be grateful for the headache.

"Friendship Is Magic" had come along too late for the old Hogwarts gang, though it'd had a huge following among the younger American air crews, so everyone involved in the last several RIMPACs before K-Day had gotten used to the morale patches and didn't blink at a scowling sky blue pegasus (the most popular among fighter squadrons) or navy blue **with armour on** (preferred by the stealth bombers) on the cowlings -- he'd asked Luna if there was anything to it but she'd made a face, shrugged, spat "Fucking **zebras,"** and he'd been warned off.

Unfortunately, it appeared this wasn't a cultural phenomenon he could afford to overlook any longer.

_**Well, that's what search engines were invented for, wasn't it? Right, I think I've got a handle on it--** _

**"You** don't believe in a kids' version of the Epona myth, **do** you?" he asked, unable to stop his eyebrows from "doing the thing, you know, that thing when he **glares** at you?" but at least it wasn't something that would have everyone in a classroom silently (or not) dying inside at the memory of that gif!

"The **what?** Sir?" They looked at each other, and him, with blank expectancy.

"You **don't really think** there's a solar horse-goddess who is hunted by the wolves of the night and brings the day and ends winter and turns into a human woman from time to time, do you?" he restated, and their faces cleared at once.

"Oh, **no** \-- it's just a great show--"

"I don't remember **that--"**

"But it's got a good moral to it, and, y'know, not **preachy** about it--"

"Do you mean the **Timberwolves?** but they don't work for **Nightmare Moon--"**

"--except in a **jokey** way, it wasn't **STUPID** about it, Sir, it--"

"Are you **sure** about the wolves, Sir? 'Cause I watched every episode and I can't re--"

"Penfold, **shush!"** Yancy said at last and the Marshal had a coughing fit that required him to get a glass of water from the cooler in the corner. (They were quite solicitous in their concern at that, of course, without ever having the slightest idea.)

"Sir, it was **annoying** when they were just goin' around being all 'holier than thou' to everybody," he waved his arms in a very typical Becket emphasis, "but **now** they've taken it to a whole new level, acting like they're the goddamn Dai Li! **Somebody's** gotta do something about it," he finished, angry, unrepentant, and yet at the same time **unreproachful** \-- not blaming his elders and superiors for not having solved the problem already, just convinced with utter assurance of his own responsibility to **take care of** a situation he had encountered.

Not that Pentecost believed for an **instant** that Yancy Becket had come up with this **particular** solution on his own: the 'Kawaiiju Hack,' as everyone was now calling it, had all the hallmarks of his younger brother's lurking sense of mischief!

The Marshal frowned, letting them stew while he thought about officers of his own past acquaintance who harped on about "Initiative, initiative, **that's** the key to advancement -- you've got to be **keen** , you young folks nowadays expect everything handed to you on a silver platter!" all the while punishing every instance and attempt at **any** manifestation of the same.

With his left hand he tapped up his personalized "nukultur.dict" file and verified that "Dai Li" was the contemporary equivalent of older generations' "KGB" as used in the (so-called) West, or "Ravens" across the old Iron Curtain, its origins in an ahistorical fiction conveniently universalizing it for younger people.

"Well, you lads traumatized your classmates **very** effectively. And I don't expect that all of the class that got put through that were equally participants in this . . . let's call it semi-organized **hazing** , eh? **Were** they?"

Well, no, the brothers admitted, they hadn't really had any way to anticipate much less control which cadets would take which VR terminals, so they'd just had to set it up to run on **all** of them. **And** to lock it down so that it counted as a real test so nobody would be willing to tab out early...

Well, okay, it wasn't a very **nice** thing to do, actually, and that was true even if it **was** really funny, and if he'd only been there he could have seen the **best freakout _ever_** when the foremost Celestial Warriors realized who the final fight was going to be against!

And no, it wasn't really fair that **they** knew what was coming since they'd gone and set it all up, too.

And they could see **why** forwarding the virtual black box recordings around the student barracks was a serious breach of the principles of respect, but--

"It is **Not. Your. Job** to discipline your fellow cadets."

"But, Marshal --"

_**"Not. Yours."** _

"But we can't just **'walk past' it** when--"

_**You impudent gosling! At least I know you CAN listen in lecture--** _

**"OURS. _MINE."_**

He stared at them by turns until they quelled, and then emphasized, "We cannot do anything about problems we are **not aware of.** An institution is not like the Breach, to be ... **comprehended** by scans and recordings of various kinds of **vibrations**. Do you **understand** what I'm saying, gentlemen?"

"But if we tell on them, aren't we just as **bad** as them?"

"Well -- **are** you?" That turned out to be a mistake, since they clearly **took** it as a trick question, and he could only take so much of the worried looks and attempts at covert sidelong glances in case the other had figured it out yet; so he dismissed them and stopped himself, again, from putting his hand to his forehead.

_**Templars. Bloody TEMPLARS infesting my school! And it took the class clowns -- who JUST so happen to be the most Drift-compatible pair of students we've got right now -- to turf them out.** _

Out in the passage -- since they evidently believed that the doors and walls here were soundproof, **all** past experience to the contrary -- Raleigh Becket remarked in a cheerful and not at all undertone of voice, "Wasn't so bad, I thought he was gonna force choke us for a second there!" and they both faded off in a rousing chorus down the (very long) hall.

**"BUT ARGO DOESNT WANT US ANY _MOOOOOOOORE!"_**

**"--THERE! ARE! _FOUR! LIGHTS!"_**

Curiously, all the finest technology of every nation of the world did **not** seem adequate to stop the problem of echoing stairwells...

_**I'm actually LOOKING FORWARD to flying to Brussels tonight, that's what these children have done to me.** _

But the long flights did give him time to think about the mess, and how to address it, as well as to work by teleconference with the rest of the Academy team to prevent anything like it from cropping up again.

When he got back from the European Parliament, he called a full assembly in the huge echoing hangar deck (the Jaeger Academy was a practical institution and didn't waste space or resources on vanities like formal reception areas or elegant auditoriums that couldn't be used for anything but.) A ruggedized container pallet made as good a soapbox as any by Marble Arch, a collar mike overcame the echoes; the Beckets had at least managed to button their uniform tunics and were **attempting** to stand to attention beside him with serious expressions, which **might** last if he talked very quickly--

"We understand that there have been some significant interpersonal difficulties here at the Jaeger Academy, of late. It is **not our intention** to allow such difficulties to continue, **nor** to oblige you to sort them out **amongst yourselves** \-- it is **our** duty, as instructors, and a **s exemplars** of the Pan Pacific Defense Corps, to be aware of, **and** to remedy, such problems **as** and **when** we may."

There was muttering at that, and fidgeting, and looks were exchanged all around, as might be expected. There were, undoubtedly, other unknown interpersonal difficulties beyond the present ones, still to be sorted out -- he'd missed the first The PPDC Are Not The Music Police situation of the Autumn Term whilst in Belgium, but it had been the Canadians again, as he'd expected; amazing how many of them didn't understand why **some** of their compatriots might take exception to them playing "Northwest Passage" over their speakers **and** say so, and had to have it spelled out to them that **even though** We Are Not The Music Police, **You** Do Not Have The Right To Expect Your Roommates To Listen To What Amounts To Colonialist Propaganda Nor To Be Upset When They Give You The Cut Direct If You Refuse To Pay Attention!

"The Cadets Becket have admitted to, and apologized **for** , the defacing of the Simulator Room this week. In consequence, they will assist the technical department first in debugging their Kawaiiju Hack and for the next **two weeks** thereafter, instead of pilot training."

There was some jubilant jeering from the -- Celestians, he supposed he **had** to call them that, absurd as it sounded -- and a few angry boos, quickly suppressed by everyone else, because "respect" wasn't just an empty slogan here. The Beckets themselves were preoccupied searching their pockets for something, until Rotary Flight Instructor Lau cleared his throat at them and they snapped back to the vertical like rubber bands.

"To the rest of you, I have **only** a **brief** message to deliver. We **are** not here to fight each other, nor to force all of us into one small mold. We are here to fight Kaiju, and to that end, to learn how to function in alignment, with or without the Drift. And we **cannot** allow ourselves to become **Templars** , no matter **how** attractive the idea might appear."

And then he stopped, and with a furrowed brow and a stare that seemed to see right through each and every one of them as an individual, he declared:

"In place of a Dark **Lord** , you will set up a **Queen**. And she shall **not** be dark but beautiful **and terrible** as the morning and the Night,  **fair as the Sea** and the Sun and the Snow upon the Mountain, **dreadful** as the Storm and the Lightning, **stronger** than the **foundations** of the **Earth**."

He waited just long enough for the imagery to hit home, but **not** long enough for anyone to start getting panic attacks, before concluding:

"And **all** shall **love** her.

**"And _despair."_**

In the silence that followed you could hear fidgeting, and a cough or two, quickly stifled, but mostly only gasps. The half of the cadets that didn't **immediately** conclude that Marshal Pentecost was the coolest teacher in the entire universe, was divided unevenly between people who had managed to miss everything that was going on between the lines over the past two terms and thus didn't understand what relevance this quotation had, and people who were looking ill, or angry, or **both** , and either looking anxiously at each other, or trying **very** **hard** not to look at each other.

(The Beckets were by now busy tossing a gum wrapper back and forth in an increasingly complex pattern and did not appear to be paying attention to anything else any more, but they already **knew** that Marshal Pentecost was the coolest teacher in the entire universe and weren't surprised in the least -- and they didn't mind debugging code at the Academy because all the techs here were cool and showed them what to do and told padawan jokes instead of treating them like idiots, so it wasn't that they were **pretending** not to be humiliated or bothered by their sentence, they simply **weren't** humiliated or bothered by it.)

 

The follow-up faculty meeting -- **everyone** here was faculty, there was no separate category of "staff" because everyone got their hands dirty, everyone taught the enlistees ("NOOB is another word we discourage, I'm afraid--") and every one of the cadets was supposed to be learning enough of every other MOS to be able to leap in and "set their shoulders to the wheel" in an emergency, even if it **was** just holding a tyre in place while being directed by someone with actual know-how in changing it -- was both exhaustive and exhausting. More so than usual, for a meeting that didn't involve either Washington, Brussels, or Kaiju Science.

"I vote we think of this as a **useful lesson** in how **no particular point** of origin can be determined OR dismissed as the cause of either puritanical impulse -- or sectarianism." _**Learning experience, that was the best way of looking at it. That, or Looking Glass Land!**_

"So **that** explains the Dirt Clod War last term," Mr. Lau exclaimed in a sudden enlightening. "All that about Air over Earth, Earth masters Air -- they weren't playing _Avatar_ , they were fighting a **skirmish!"**

"Mmph." Pentecost had forgotten about that detail, with all the other things that had transpired since. "That **does** fit the available evidence. **And** explains why nobody would **give** any." (And in fact was the case, the Beckets confirmed.) "Along with the fistfight in the mess hall last week." (It had ended in a time-out from pilot training for the three students who had done the lions' share of the punching, along with screaming some bizarrely incomprehensible insults that suddenly made perfect sense.)

"Sparkleban!" Drop Sim Coordinator Singh shook her head. **"Bloody _Sparkleban."_**

It wasn't quite as easy to shut the problem down as making a declaration of Intent -- there were some ongoing frictions, a certain number of the still-incensed said things like **"SparkleRON!"** now and drew chalk cats'-eyes with rainbow irises on dorm walls -- chalk was fine, chalk was impermanent, the Academy supplied chalk by the **pallet** rather than deal with a graffiti problem, or rather dealt with it by making it **no longer** a problem -- you could always rewrite something after the rains, if you felt **that** strongly about it, and if you were an artist, you could always use more practice. That said, using chalk to harass your classmates was definitely **not** in the spirit of the Corps, and further Words were necessary.

Nor did the Celestial Warriors fold as easily as a juice carton: there was no welcome from their instructors as their patterns of reporting "someone **saying** something, you know, that wasn't really **appropriate?"** were being noted now and a divide to conquer strategy had been taken to both minimize any devilry and stop anyone else from taking advantage of the changed situation. But one ringleader in particular was deserving of their self-awarded title, taking it upon herself to beard the lion in his very den.

"I've received your emails, Cadet Jenkins. I don't understand why you believe that I will **agree** with your assessment that the Beckets should be punished further, **if** you deliver it in person."

She looked at him very seriously, with the confident gravitas of the team captain and champion on several school sports teams that she was before enlisting, and said as if it should matter, "Sir, **are** you **aware** that Dr. Lightcap is a cousin of mine?"

_**Well, well, well.** _

"Yes. As a matter of fact, I have an **email** written up to your cousin, about this whole business. I've been holding off on **sending** it, till everyone had a chance to calm down -- but I think I'll send it today, after all."

The way her eyes widened and her expression changed was, as they said, "pure comedy gold" -- it was far too familiar, that realization from a young Etonite that no, they could not actually **bargain** their way out of trouble, because they had nothing to offer or threaten him with, that **he** could break their career but **not** vice versa, and all their golden boy or girl charm was not going to alter the balance of power in this office.

_**Gravity doesn't care about family connections, or charisma, or societal structures. Gravity doesn't bend for a pilot's will the way coaches and teachers and parents have. Gravity has no pity and NEITHER do the Kaiju, better learn that soonest--** _

"Um..."

He didn't blink.

"May I -- may I **withdraw** my request, Sir?"

"You **may."**

"Does -- does that mean you **won't** send the letter?"

"Can you give me a reason **not** to? Nor to add a postscript explaining how you tried to **pull rank** on me?"

She flinched, give her that -- something beyond _**Oh shit, I'm in it now!** _ was going through that straight-A mind there -- but the tears beginning to well up did not weigh in her favor: too many other tears had been shed as a result of the Celestians' efforts to tip **that** balance.

"Rangers **die** in combat, Cadet. It is not **glamorous** , it is not **glorious** , and when it happens **I am the one** who writes the letters and sends their effects to their next-of-kin, because there are rarely bodies to be recovered and if there are, they are in no state to be released. The Corps **does not practice burial at sea** for sentimental reasons only. **This is the life you seek.** Will you trust **yourself** \-- your body, your mind, your life **and** your hope of completing your mission --  to those you have **hounded** for reasons of pride wearing the mask  of Virtue?" He was laying it on thick, he admitted that, but you **had** to do that with children if you were to have a hope of getting their attention.

Her mouth opened, but no sounds emerged.

"More importantly, what trust should **they** have in **you** , who despise them as **mere mortals,** seeing yourself in a Jaeger _**already,**_ taller than any other human vessel, yes -- but **not** taller than any of the satellites that guide LOCCENT and therefore you. Not taller than the **Jumphawks** which carry you into battle, which **only** fly for the thousands of hours of care given them by their falconers."

"And I, Cadet Jenkins, am the **Chief Falconer** here." He wondered if she understood what he was saying -- her deer-in-the-headlamps expression didn't bode well!

"Your **very sanity** , let alone your **life** , depends on the techs who monitor your brainwaves, once you're bolted into your armor. **Nothing** is in your hands alone, from that moment on. If you can't **accept** that, you should scrub yourself from the program this instant. Go think things over, and send me an essay by morning detailing your reasons why I **shouldn't** send you home tomorrow afternoon." He nodded to the door and she leapt from her chair without requiring a second signal.

"One more thing, Cadet." She froze, wary in her halted flight as a wounded doe, hoping to attract no further shots -- so he kept his tone light, even genial. "I'd just like to **ask** you, one pilot to another, did it ever **occur** to you to ask yourself, if there **were** no solid ground -- _**where on earth would you land?**_ "

She stared at him, clearly boggled by a question that had never in any shape or form occurred to her.

"Not even the **albatross** can stay aloft forever, as your Air Force learned to their sorrow." She stared in a different kind of incomprehension. "Gooney birds? Midway?" Pentecost sighed. "Go work on your answers, Jenkins. I'll be **waiting** for them."

 

**sarah! what are gooney birds?**

_**It's another name for albatross, silly!** _

**why shd it mean something to pilots???**

_**LOL R U JOKIN GIRL?** _

**WHAT? TELL ME! I MUST KNOW!**

_**Google is your friend. Rinse, Repeat!** _

The public reprimand had made the rank-and-file of the Celestial Warriors -- who had no official command structure but knew very well who was **above** and who **below** , nonetheless -- much less amenable and disciplined, ever since. Mila Jenkins, who had had the misfortune to be born in a year when 'Emily was the leading name for girls in the United States, but had discovered on her own that 'miles' meant 'knight' in Latin and adjusted accordingly, was not happy with the situation. Not in the least.

Three hours of reading about Midway Island, the Gooney Bird problem, the various efforts of the USAF to find some, well, _ **middle way** _ between trying to exterminate the albatrosses which hadn't worked very well anyways, and giving up their refueling point -- hadn't clarified the Marshal's point at all.

In fact, she swung between deciding him to be **completely deranged,** as shown by his disregard for the dignity of the school and the contempt shown for it by the Becket brothers -- trust **men** to stick together! -- and being even more convinced that he was speaking in tongues, that this was some deeply encrypted message that she needed to decipher, that she was missing something critical and profound in the terms, and kept on digging **deeper**.

In the morning, Marshal Pentecost read the entire chain of free-associations and frantic declarations of heartfelt commitment to the Jaeger Program and the Academy and wondered just **what** they were putting into those 24-hour energy drinks that had taken the place of students' caffeine since his day. (It would never have occurred to him that an entire mass of symbology putting Dan Brown's best effort to shame could have been retroactively constructed off a throwaway reference to what should have been common knowledge among any pilot or would-be, particularly Americans.)

But anyone who managed to tie "The Rime of the Ancient Mariner" to _The Satan Bug_ and use both texts as groundwork for why she should be allowed to help guard the oceans of Terra **deserved** a second chance, he rather thought.

 

His ward didn't find the whole situation as amusing as he had expected she would; instead, Mako had found the idea of "Kawaii Kaiju" to be both horrifying and **deeply disturbing** on a philosophical level.

"But how could you **fight** them?" she had demanded, with increasing distress -- not something which endeared the brothers to him particularly much, that night -- "Sensei, if they're **cute** , if they look _**helpless**_ , then could you still **hit** them? Wouldn't that make it **hard?"**

"Well, that was the **point,"** he tried to explain, "trying to make the other students see that just because something is **pretty** , it isn't necessarily **good** or **kind** , hm?"

But she was unable to separate the idea as a **hypothesis** from the idea of it as an **actuality** , and the **only** way he was able to get her to stop fixating on the scenario was to suggest that you'd need an **even cuter** Jaeger to battle them with, and they'd finished out the call with her busily scratching out ideas for what Jaeger _Maneki-Neko_ would look like, and what armaments she ought to have, to battle the Kawaiiju...

 

And now the same mind that had concluded that the best way to put a stop to bullying-in-the-name-of-Holy-Goodness was to rewire a group simulator system into displaying chibi ponies before trying anything else **was trained on his office,** in quest of a very large brass instrument, so that its possessor could transform himself quite literally into a one-man-band.

It had begun innocuously enough, with a question seemingly born of nostalgia:

"Sir, you know how I was in marching band in high school?"

"Since the entire PPDC **knows** how you were in marching band in high school, I should think so," he answered with unsuspecting good cheer; the latest Tech report said the foundries were ahead of schedule and the latest Science report was optimistic that they could shave a good fifteen minutes off Breach warnings by redploying the little gossamer-bulb Kurage subs in a new stochastic grid pattern, and they **ought** to have another ten weeks before they even needed to start worrying about testing that belief, so it didn't **get** much better than **that** in his job these days.

"Oh, yeah, right," Becket nodded vigorously, "that was **funny** , I **still** wish we could have had a school band at the Academy but I get why we really didn't have time for that, with all those **classes** and **drills**."

The vids were still around, but memory augmented them, even faultily, interpolated the bits that one hadn't witnessed in person with the data from what the collective subconscious still called "tapes" even though there hadn't been any celluloid strips involved for longer than some cadets had been alive!

The Jaeger Academy wasn't **down on** marching drill, it was a splendid way to achieve the sorts of coordination that would serve you well in the Conn-Pod, if you were unlucky enough to make it that far, **or** prevent you from tripping over your messmates when a fire-suppression call sounded, and overall it **helped** establish basic physical coordination, self-discipline, and useful levels of synchronization for people who hadn't had much experience working together in groups.

But the Jaeger Program in general had no **use** for drill team precision, not when lives depended on freewheeling coordination and split-second responsiveness to changing circumstances. Drilling for its own sake? Motor effort wasted on exercises that wouldn't help in the Conn-Pod, far less any other of the ten thousand skills needing to be done quickly and safely by human hands every day around the 'Domes? Nope, not done, **not done** at all.

But the new recruits weren't **all** on the same page -- some came out of the regular Army and lack of drill conflicted with their sense of What Was Right, and still others came out of the JROTC or military schools, and were hell-bent on setting the Jaeger Program straight.

Not that they could **force** the Jaeger Academy to change its program to accord better with theirs, of course -- but some of them were determined to **show** these amateurs how to do it, as one young scion of an old West Point family had been overheard to say, and if they wished to waste the precious Arctic summer days marching in hollow squares, well, by the inbuilt standards of the Academy and the PPDC there wasn't a lot Pentecost could do about it.

They were only hurting **themselves** , after all.

But it wasn't as though the other students couldn't figure out the subtext -- well, it was hardly **unspoken** , was it? this micro-corps of mid-Atlantic natives wasn't subtle about it -- and he couldn't blame **them** for getting their backs up, either.

The problem came to a head, **and** ended, on the very same clear midsummer's day.

That it was a day when the Beckets both had free time between classes, and wandered down to watch the other bunch tramping around the football field (either American or International, also the cricket pitch and the lacrosse field, depending on who had signed up for it that day) was not **quite** a coincidence.

It might not have happened at all, if either or both of them had been better at controlling their facial expressions -- other students, from the US as well as other nations, had rubbernecked the proceedings for days, without effect.

 **"WHAT** are you **laughing** at, Becket?"

"Him or me?"

"I think he meant **me** , dude."

"You're **so** arrogant. He was **obviously** talking 'bout me."

"I was **SPEAKING** to **YOU! _NOT YOU!_** Didn't anyone teach you **any manners** , you two?"

"Um...."

"Is **that** a trick question?"

"What were you **laughing** at? You think military discipline's a **joke**?"

"No, no."

"Marching's cool -- **if** you do it properly."

There had been a deathly silence, while the American general's son figured out that he and his friends had just been insulted to hell and gone.

"Like **you** can do better."

Raleigh Becket had just snorted, and then tried to look like he wasn't laughing at them, which only set the other boy off worse.

" **You** think **you** can march better than medal-winning drill team members?"

"Like ROTC? I **know** I can."

Yancy had looked at the sky, whistling. It was 'The Cat Came Back,' according to bystanders' recollection, as no one had started filming yet.

 **"You.** Think you can **march better,** than **us."**

"That's what I **said** , right?"

This continued for several repeats before it escalated to a challenge, because the West Point brat found reality impossible to accept at first.

"Look, dude, I'm not **judging** you, all I'm sayin' is, I can march **circles** around you guys. **Backwards."**

_**"PhyeahRIGHT!"** _

"Oh, he **can,"** Yancy said solemnly. "So can **I."**

"Five hundred **dollars** says you can't."

_**"Done."** _

"Wait, **what?"**

"You guys all **heard** , right? He made a bet with us?"

"You're seriously challenging _**US** _ to a five hundred dollar bet? You can't even **cover** that!"

"We got it." It was all their collective savings, minus forty-some  dollars, but they hadn't been lying. "You call your cadence, we'll **match** you."

And the most surreal of duels ever waged among rival groups of students began, with the two Beckets standing side by side, Raleigh snapping his fingers on the down-beat, his face completely serious for once, while Yancy tracked the drill squad with his eyes and then tapped his brother lightly but definitely on the elbow, whistling a bright, sharp, nerve-jangling tune that fans of old war movies -- or high school marching bands -- **might** have recognized, called "The Year of Jubilee" in scores...

They started to march in time with the military academy recruits, Raleigh humming a bass line at surprising volume -- but **backwards** , as they'd promised.

That was bad enough -- it distracted the drill team veterans, it put them (even more) off step, and it sent the onlookers into gales of laughter. (By this time, cell phones had been being activated.)

But then they started wheeling, as they'd warned, and to circle around the filed group in a circle ("Caisson Song"), and then their circles got more and more complex, turning into figure eights, which the larger unit couldn't evade -- they tightened them on the fly, they adjusted their strides invisibly, they moved in unison -- and Raleigh Becket never looked back or sideways **once** , letting his brother guide him totally by touch, or some less visible mode of communication, perhaps, as they segued from one melody to the next without ever breaking stride. (Not even for "El Condor Pasa" --  or "Popcorn", which was hard for the military-minded to imagine as a march _**at all.)**_

It started out ridiculous, turned very quickly into something **frightening** in its almost video-game-like inevitability, as the ever-more-alarmed and disconcerted aspiring Jaeger pilots were thwarted at every turn (to "Eye of the Tiger," not less recognizable to American youth for being whistled) -- and then slid right over that edge into **ridiculousness** again, as they started to introduce a bit of swing, and then leapt on into the kind of quasi-jazz steps that ambitious marching bands work very hard on. ("Give My Regards To Broadway," by now.)

That was the point when one of the Academy registrars rushed breathless into his office shouting "Mira, Señor! You've **got** to watch this!" with an incredulous grin on her face, waving him to the long bank of windows that overlooked the obstacle course and multisports field.

"Is **that** \--"

"The Becket boys, si--"

"They're--"

_**"Dancing."** _

"Around the Junior Martinet Squad--"

"Yessss," the whole office sighed, having gotten thoroughly sick of that contingent's pinched disappointment with the Jaeger Academy, and their often-stated resolve to let The Folks Back Home On The Potomac know just how disappointed they were, over recent weeks. (Getting trounced to the lyrical notes of "The Little Mermaid Medley" **wasn't** going to help with that.)

Pentecost couldn't completely keep back his own grin at this turn of events. **He'd** been the one to get the tedious emails, and on more than one occasion, **phone call,** from the chief offender's father, before he put him on the cold list and had all further attempts at interference sent to the tree system to be handled by "Gladys" instead. (Those who declared the PPDC a chilly institution **quite** devoid of a sense of humour, simply didn't **get** it, **or** how twisted it was.) As amusing as it was to give them not just BBC Newscaster but the full Winston Churchill treatment, and watch them **twitch** , it never made up for having to have the conversations in the first place.

"Who would have guessed? Their 'World Turned Upside Down,' " he chuckled (though they were at the "A Team Theme" in actuality.)

_**The least important part of their beloved Army-Navy games was the scoreboard, they should have been watching their band leaders instead!** _

The scions of high society, Pentagon-style, were getting worn down already -- some of it simply **stress** , to be sure (John Coltrane was **not** a band composer no matter what anyone said or did, "West Side Story" didn't belong in a march-past either) but **they** hadn't been put through their paces since middle school by band leaders **consumed** with the hope of getting to perform at the Rose Bowl (for so long as that institution still existed) and wearing old-fashioned gilt-braided wool uniforms regardless of the temperature, winter or summer, whilst carrying their own instruments. The Beckets looked like they'd just had a leisurely walk in the park, and could keep doing this all day. Which they **could** , even out of practice as they were.

In fact, he was seriously contemplating the idea that he had an obligation to break it off now, as the drill squad was going desperately red in the face, and their leader had looked like he was on the verge of rupturing several blood vessels at once even before the brothers got to _Mulan,_ and those onlookers who weren't rolling helplessly around on the grass of the pitch started a ragged but loud sing-along -- it was pretty much **over** by the first repeat of _**"BE A MAN!"**_ but the old guard kept trudging grimly onward, forlorn hope that they were, and barely even **pretending** to be in step--

The coup-de-grace was delivered, mostly by accident, when the Beckets turned parallel to the marching file and did a perfectly synchronized, brayingly out-of-tune rendition of _**"Hello, mah baby! Hello, mah honey! Hello, mah ragtime gal!"** _ as immortalized by Looney Tunes' Michigan J. Frog--

The result, of course, was **instant** domino effect. It was the most spectacular 20-man pileup that Pentecost had ever seen, and that likely went for **all** the other veterans watching too.

At that moment the Beckets stopped their -- well, **prancing** was the _**only** _ word for it -- and dropped into a weightlifter's crouching stance, raising their fists in a gesture of deliberate slow menace southwesterly to the horizon.

The New Zealand recruits had reworded the old "Kangaroo" haka for this century, and Taare Smith, one of the current crop of cadets who'd once played center for the All Blacks, had made sure to teach all his subsection (the ones who didn't know it already, that is) the proper words **and** gestures.

It should have been not just ridiculous but **embarrassing** , the way watching white officers try to perform haka **inevitably** was, what with the stiff, pained expressions and the efforts to distance one's self from one's own body that always accompanied the motions which they **clearly felt** to be unnatural, and so **made** artificial (though their squaddies **far** less frequently) -- but the Jaeger Academy cadets were, for the most part, drawn from a different wellspring than junior officers in NATO and allied nations had traditionally come, regardless of their country of origin, and they had not grown up with **quite** the same self-conscious sense of **difference.**

Instead, in their working class schools and regiments and office breakrooms and backstage canteens they had swapped bits of culture and consciousness with a cheerful unconcern for proprieties that would have sent those old guardians of social boundary on **all sides** of the global divide to the hospital in shock, **far** worse than the bared thighs and strange hats of teenage fashion, most likely.

The two snarling blond boys thundering out _ **"TENA KOE KAIJU! TUPOTO KOE KAIJU!"** _ weren't awkwardly mouthing foreign syllables, they were **investing** them as a proper challenge, with the full force of lungpower that could have driven a regiment at a quickstep for hours on end, if they hadn't played for a **school** band instead -- and someday soon might fuel the the fury of a new Jaeger still to be hatched from its cradling shells of concrete and iron, the way they were slamming their forearms together a promise of destruction and many, **many** worlds of hurt for the enemy:

_**"AO TŪROA TENEI HAERE NEI -- AU AU AUE A!"** _

which was rendered down into modern English as

**Hey there, Kaiju!**  
 **Better watch out, Kaiju!**  
 **Planet Earth's comin' for you--**  
 **Whoa -- _Whoa -- WHOAH! HAH!_**

and close enough for government work, as they liked to say in this country.

By the time they had finished all the repeats in all the languages it had garnered so far, a fair number of other onlookers had joined in -- and not only students, those of the instructors within earshot who knew the sequences of what was coming to be called the "Shatterdome Haka" lending **their** voices and bodies to the effort too.

Burly RN bosuns from Clyde's bonnie banks and tiny teenage girls who looked like Mako would in far too short a time -- there was no **way** he was keeping her out of here, **that** battle was lost already -- white haired chemistry professors from Ivy League schools, young industrial engineers from Seoul, mission control specialists from Baikonur, airline attendants from everywhere, **all** of them **unified** in celebrating human defiance against the foe--

He truly didn't know whether he wanted to laugh in delight, weep in heartbreak, or cheer them on from the window -- this bit of morale boosting was something that had grown up like saplings in a ruin, practically **overnight** , and unlike the **old** top-down attempts at forcing enthusiasm and martial resolve with music and rhyme -- which always worked on the heart for a bit but then quickly rang hollow once you'd **been** through a few scraps -- **this** one just kept growing on its own.

There had been some objections from a small number of Australians in the Corps who were offended by this **particular** haka's dev hist -- that long ago rugby defeat **still** smarted, apparently -- but they were quickly suppressed by their compatriots who thought it was **great** that they were ranked just under the Kaiju as a force to be reckoned with!

(There had been some **other** objections, from the American media, mainly, with the support of a certain famous retired opera singer speaking out on PRI --but when multiple notable Māori celebrities in the worlds of theatre as well as sports who actually **lived in** New Zealand told them so, they agreed, however reluctantly, that it was none of their business after all.)

_**It's not for me to tell them otherwise, either!** _

It was on the contrary strangely **fitting** that a battle chant which had originally told of ancient heroes stealing back the sun and battling old gods and demons of night and chaos from the sea -- which had been remolded into a sports rallying cry for people whose wars were no longer fought with visible weapons so much as with laws and regulations, not close to **home** at least -- and then taken **back** to the old sort of war by another generation of sometime-farmers and craftspeople, just as resource-strapped and trammeled in their own ways as the previous ones, though the political lines were different and obscure now, and carried far and wide into still **other** celebrations of competition like surfing--

And now that humanity stood once again facing the night primaeval, the time of **eyes** that gleamed where nothing had been but a moment ago, of ominous sounds and worse silences and the shadows of wood and wave filled with well-protected things that had too many teeth and moved too fast for our poor night vision and slow reflexes to track or handle, with only our wits to defend us -- it was renewed **again** , to fulfill **completely** its original promise.

We had sturdier sticks and brighter torches now, but it was all the same in the end, wasn't it? And **every time** you had to **choose** , whether to huddle around the campfire and hope that the lurking hunger grabbed **someone else,** or **pick up** one of those sticks and go out **into the night** to chase it off--

And if a handful of words and dance moves could psyche you up enough to make the difference between rushing forward to death with or without any **glory** to it, and holding back in short-lived sanity at a key moment -- and **all** the moments now were key! -- then that was just another tool humanity had made to defend ourselves, right? Even if it was currently directed towards a different targed.

He couldn't say that they were **wrong** , either -- the boy soldiers down there might be fellow humans, but he wasn't certain that they were going to be PPDC material either; their military fetishizing had a worryingly familiar tone.

_**We needed the core of veterans, to teach the civilians how not to to fall over their own or each others' feet -- but we need to NOT fall into the old mistakes again, ourselves.** _

And now a pair of miners' great-grandkids from the remote north country hinterlands had shown up the flower of American chivalry, two lads who looked like they ought to be holding surfboards in a Beach Boys' video **literally** dancing circles around their drill team discipline, and if that Pentagon-bred brat down there couldn't pick himself up, dust himself off, and **laugh** at himself about it, there was no way in **hell** he was going to be able either to cope with the Drift **or** be allowed to wave a weapon around in public.

Pentecost didn't **want** to scrub anyone, but it was the Corps that mattered, and if it meant dealing with irritated majors and generals from Washington getting on the horn to enable their precious boys' careers -- amazing how the very media they they bought and wooed for generations, could seduce **them** back with the lure of rock-stardom! but it had been that way since the Mercury astronauts were the darlings of the country, hadn't it? just had to make the tin-can tall enough with big enough firecrackers! -- well, it was **worth** it, and it wasn't as if **they** were particularly fearsome, not by comparison to Kaiju!

(There was a **lot** of fuss afterwards, when it became clear that the junior militia contingent was going to be expected to pay the pipers -- "I don't pretend to know how it is where **you** come from, but in **my country** officers are expected to **pay their debts,** " was something he had to say at one point -- and demanded arbitration on the grounds of unfairness that the Beckets hadn't **said** ahead of time that they were wind players in marching band in school. Which, well, "You **expect** everyone you challenge to **show you their advantages** beforehand? Did they teach you **ANYTHING** besides marching in squares? Or did you just not **do** your assigned readings from Sun Tzu and Clausewitz, Mr. Donnelly?" had been **begging** for another phone call from Virginia but had been worth it, without question.

The attempt to plead off on the grounds that they'd **cheated** bcause Yancy had acted as spotter was struck down because the Beckets hadn't claimed to be psychic, just better at **marching** , and likewise that they shouldn't have been allowed the dance steps -- that didn't make it **not marching,** just made it demonstration-team level! The attempted rank-pull when one of the drill club had tried to make something of the supposed "girliness" of the elder Becket's former instrument being a flute -- or sometimes _**piccolo** _ \-- had been the best part, as Yancy had simply looked down from his height on the other boy, his head tilted a bit like a mastiff quizzically regarding a terrier, spun one finger in a circle and asked, "You wanna **go 'round again!?"** "Yeah and **WE** **had better uniforms too!"** "Raleigh. **Shut up.")**

That was probably the moment when he **knew** , long before any conscious decision was made, that **here** was his next US Jaeger crew, not just because their compatibility was clearly off the charts, no need for measuring devices, not just for their demonstrated stamina -- but because they so clearly **got it,** got what the PPDC was **supposed to be about** , even if they weren't eloquent enough to express it in any other manner than **interpretive dance,** even if they giggled inappropriately during assembly and would have given **any** drill sergeant anywhere, **ever** , instantaneous **apoplexy** , even if he despaired of them on a daily basis (and **pitied** their high school teachers, who must have hoped that the younger Becket would be **less** of a chaotic influence on their classes than his predecessor, poor optimistic **fools**!)

If it played upon deep-rooted American prejudices and ingrained assumptions, well, that couldn't be **helped**. If **he** thought it was hilarious, and serve Uncle Sam **right** to serve up the Beckets on a silver platter, that couldn't be helped **either**.

If underneath it all -- and beyond the surreality, and the post-victory silliness of fistbumps, high-fives, mass group hugs and self-congratulatory shouts of **"DUDE! THAT WAS _EPIC!"_** \-- he knew that what he'd just seen was the kind of over-the-top thing that under **other** circumstances won its participants the DSO or the VC, and that this sort of gallantry was **far** too often Gazetted only **posthumously** \-- well, no more could **that** be helped.

No more than any officer he'd ever served under, or **known** for that matter, would have understood how "the honour of the regiment" could be as ably defended by two boys improvising a sequence of pop songs to their own private drumming as any commander might wish--

But all that was in the past, and several real Drops too, and right now he had an extraordinarily earnest & well-behaved Raleigh Becket looking up at him with, well, you really had to call them **puppy dog eyes,** there was nothing else **for** it.

Something was definitely **up.**

"So, I was thinking, since I used to play tuba, but it was the school's, so I couldn't take it with me when we enlisted, and we were too busy at the Academy to do anything extracurricular," -- _**except hack simulators!** _ \-- "I was thinking I could get one **now**. With my paycheck?"

It suddenly clicked into place just what was being asked of him. It was **not** a pleasant shock.

"Good **God,** Becket, is this a **joke?"**

"What? No, Sir, I've got a **catalog** right here," he shook the tablet enthusiastically, then fumbled to bring it back to the right screen. "They'll ship it to the music store downtown and I'll borrow Luis' truck to pick it up--"

**"No."**

"It's not a problem, I already **checked."**

 **"No,** you cannot have a **tuba."**

"What? But--"

 **"Of course** you can't have a tuba. In the **Shatterdome**? Think of the **noise** , man! Think of **the echoes!"**

That **might** not have been the best exhortation after all, as young Raleigh's face lit up with that delirious Becket grin.

**"I KNOW, RIGHT!?"**

**"NO."**

"I could keep it in my cabin?"

"You. Have. **Neighbors."**

"I could play it on the helipad?"

"Like **hell!** This is **not** going to **happen** , Becket."

This went on in similar vein for several repeats with variations, until the junior pilot asked hopefully, "What if I do **extra drills?"**

 **"Ranger."** He didn't even try to keep the disappointment from his voice. "This is **not** something you can **bribe** me into letting you have, by taking on **additional chores.** If you think you need more simulator time, then **take** it. If you think you need more Conn-Pod drill, then **do** it! Your free time's your own, **until** the alarms go off."

It was odd how the North American, Australian and British cadets never seemed to **realize** that **trying** to look wistful and pathetic in order to get their way from him, made him want to throw things at them instead and tell them to **grow up** ; he supposed he shouldn't have expected that to **change** just because he'd gone and given **this** one half a Jaeger.

 

**Yancy** Becket, on the other hand, was completely on board the No Tubas In The Shatterdome policy.

"I love my brother like, well, like a **brother,"** the elder pilot said mournfully, "but I had to listen to him practice every day. **Every. Day.** \--You know how **early** he gets up?" He himself had gotten up even earlier, simply to have a chance of buttonholing Pentecost in the fishbowl's tiny galley before anyone else caught the Marshal first.

He yawned and fumbled for the sugar; Tendo hastily slid away the big glass salt cylinder and made sure he had the right container to hand. Yancy nodded a thanks through yet another yawn and gulped down a third of the mug before adding, "The _Star Wars_ theme on a tuba? Is funny. **Once."** He shuddered. "Do you **know** what it's like to hear the 'Imperial March' played 20 times in a row, _**no breaks?"**_

The older men contemplated that possibility with the sort of horror usually reserved for the plot's announcement of the immanent arrival of an intruder through the Breach.

"You don't **want** to, either," the pilot added quite unnecessarily. He yawned again. "Stay strong, Sir, **stay strong.** I know how he **begs** , but -- **don** 't give in," and wandered away still looking glazed about the eyeballs.

"I heard about these **synthesizer** wind instruments," Tendo said after a pensive pause. "Touchpad interface. You wouldn't think it'd work, but ... they're supposed to be pretty good for fingering practice. I bet we could rig something up to a **headset** \-- I can check if there's something out there for brass. Or someone here could come up with one, how **hard** could it be?"

Given what sort of routine miracles Jaeger Tech turned out by the hour, this wasn't as boastful as it sounded.

"That's **not** going to do it," Pentecost shook his head firmly. "He wants something to knock the cobwebs from the rafters and be heard over helicopter engines. 'Accept no substitutes,' I'm much afraid."

Before the LOCCENT chief could respond, Yancy slid back halfway around the galley door, having returned with the uncanny and disturbing swift silence of a tall athlete who should not be **able** to move so fast nor so quietly.

"You know what's even **worse** than **that,** gentlemen?"

He paused dramatically.

 **" 'Run Runaway.'** On a tuba. Non-stop, for 20 repeats."

 **"How** is that even _ **physically possible?"**_

The elder Becket looked conspiratorially in either direction and dropped his voice.

 _ **"Circular breathing,**_ **Sir,"** he intoned as he refilled his mug before vanishing again, this time definitely bound for the mess hall.

"I'm gonna have **nightmares,"** Tendo said, with a hint of awe in his voice. "Can you imagine, oh -- **'Safety Dance,'** in the bays, on tuba? For an **hour?"**

Pentecost looked up at the ceiling, closed his eyes.

"Yes. We'd have a **mutiny."**

"And **half** the 'Dome would be egging him **on."**

"Ergo, mutiny. **Thank you** for sharing that nightmare, Tendo, how **did** you know I was running short again? --They played in their school jazz band, too, as I've **been reminded** \-- 'Caravan,' on tuba, endless repeat."

"Ouch, ouch, ouch. That's just **wrong** , Marshal. Or -- what's that one **you** like? 'The Lark Ascending,' ? That would sound **unique** , on tuba."

"Mmph. Or 'Adagio For Strings.' "

"Heh," Tendo shook his head admiringly. "Would have made **that** movie ending a lot different. Oh -- 'Ride of the Valkyries.' "

" 'Hallelujah Chorus.' "

" 'Ode to Joy.' "

"Ravel's 'Bolero.' "

They continued to come up with decliningly appropriate musical selections and suggest them while they finished making up their respective coffees and a few other people's, though Pentecost only carried his own and his tablet, leaving the complicated task of wrangling the rest to the by-all-acknowledged and undisputed master of **that** specialty.

 

To Hercules Hansen, his old comrade, and older friend, he remarked on their irregularly regular cell phone call, "Well, he hasn't given up on that **tuba** yet. "

"That's some **dedication** , there. Good quality, in a Ranger."

 **"Not. Helping,** Herc." He sighed, looked up at the red-green aurora over the helidrome, that flickering electronic wall between Earth and infinity. "I don't quite **fathom** it -- I was willing to compromise, I'm not **trying** to make our lives difficult. I told him that a clarinet would be acceptable, I'd even allow a **saxophone**. But he kept going on about the mouthpieces being too different. Then his brother told him to 'fess up, he simply didn't **want** a woodwind or anything other than the loudest of brasses -- turns out he'd played clarinet in sixth form and switched over to the tuba because of the way it sounded. Meaning, the **name** of it--"

 _ **"Ohgawd--"** _ Herc said in heart-felt tones. It wasn't hard to imagine the Conn-Pod chatter of children who thought that a word **sounded funny.**

 **"And** the way it shook the window panes."

"Ah, well, he's got you **there** , Stacker. Bulletproof glass and not much of it, you wouldn't have that problem at least."

"You're as bad a barracks-room lawyer as **they** are. So then the haggling started: he thought I wouldn't recognize 'sousaphone' if he asked for that **instead** , and then--"

"Wait, I'm sorry, he thought **you** wouldn't know the parts of a brass band -- who does he think **invented** the things?"

Pentecost chortled.

"I'm afraid if you asked him that question **yourself** , he'd think that meant **I** came up with the concept of **military bands."**

"Right. Riiight," Herc's face was an artist's study of insufficiently suppressed hilarity.

"I **was** feeling sorry enough for the lad that I almost said 'yes' to the bugle -- but then it hit me **exactly** what the result would be, and missed **that** pitfall. Yancy Becket would murder me in my sleep if I let his brother have a **bugle** in their bunk."

"So what'd he do then?"

"Try to recruit other, **unsuspecting** parties to his campaign. At breakfast yesterday one of our Jumphawk pilots dropped by to mention that some of his chaps had been thinking it would be **good for morale** to start a post band, and an hour later the Crawler crew emailed me to ask permission for a post band, and **then** one of my guards happened to mention that she'd been **bass drum** in the Marine Corps band and wouldn't it be **nice** if the Shatterdome had its own marching band? Each and every one of them, by **sheer coincidence,** had been talking to Raleigh Becket the previous hour."

"There's more than **one** way to sling a tuba. Worst part is watching them sneak around thinkin' they're so clever, tryin' to put one over -- were **we** ever that clueless, eh?"

"Heh. So now **I'm the bad guy** who won't let the lads and lasses have a bit of harmless fun, thanks to Pilot Officer Percy here."

"Oh, **no."**

"Peregrine Group Leader showed up on my doorstep first thing today asking me with all due respect if I wasn't _ **perhaps being a bit**_ ** _PETTY_** _ **towards young Becket in the whole affair,**_ and in the interests of 'Dome morale it might be a good thing to **unbend** a little."

_**"Oh-h?"** _

**"I said,** 'Raleigh Becket. Oh-Dark-Thirty. In The Passage. With A Bugle,' and that was that. She went a bit green, apologized no end -- but I told her not to worry, I'd **nearly** given in myself."

" 'Buckets an' buckets of krisma,' " Herc said knowingly.

"I just wish it'd come with something other than high **CON** scores," the Marshal sighed, having been a notable DM in the old squadron's gaming nights, and having seen **far** too many results of everyone wanting to be the Mightiest Warrior of Them All. "No, that's **not** fair either. They're not stupid fighters, It's just ...that their idea of **stealth**. . . revolves around waiting for the Kaiju to get up closer before blowing the horn. **Why** did we give them a foghorn, Herc?"

"Well--Science says that it **scares** them, shakes them up like a lorry horn to scare sheep off the road. Of course **that** dun' work either!"

"But that's **not** what we're seeing on the plots, **you** know that. It seems to **attract** them more than anything -- not that that's a **bad** thing, from the tactical side, but -- I'm not sure that **anyone** in Science has a clue, half the time, and the trouble is, **I** can't tell the ones who are just throwing out chaff to cover that, from the ones who really **have** something to say."

"You can't **read** 'em? Figured you for it, if **anyone** could."

"What **I** know is how to tank and flank -- well and good. Yes, I studied tactics and strategy along with logistics like everybody else, and yes, it **helps** us keep up with their raids. But I just don't see **anything** in our data that matches **anything** we learned at Cranwell, when it comes to the long game."

"Well, they're **not** humans, they're **animals** , so I wouldn't expect them to act like Julius Caesar. But I thought we weren't talkin' about **work** tonight. Y' don't think this'll cause a problem in the field, him bein' pissed off at you about not gettin' to get his tuba? **Toobah.** Toooobaaaaa--"

 **"Stop** it."

"Tuba tuba tuba. Y' can't **make** me."

"Oh god, if they had any **idea--"** Grinning, he catches himself before passing his hand before his face -- he can't even let himself in **private** , lest he get out of the habit of **being** out of the habit. "I swear they think **adults** are all androids, just power down at night instead of sleeping, no private lives at all."

"Well, I know **you** are. One of the Original Thirteen an' all. Meself, I'm not **telling."**

"Pff. You're the Terminator, can't fool **me."**

 "Heh." The other man's face grows suddenly concerned. "You **sure** this isn't gonna cause problems, though? If he feels like the two of you are **ganging up** on him, it could be bad for the Drift--"

"Nah, this isn't **serious** , I know because ** _Yancy's_** threatening to get a vuvuzuela if he **does** somehow acquire a horn." He sighed. "Just the usual. Matter of principle more than anything, lad can't drop it without feeling like it's **a retreat."**

"Eurgh," Herc winced. "I know that one too well."

"Yeah. **Kids.** He'll stop whinging as soon as he gets distracted by something else. I just wish it would be his **manuals** once in a while."

"What **does** distract him?"

"What **doesn't?** You remember The Movie--"

"I thought we **didn't** talk about The Movie."

"We're not. But -- you remember **in** the Movie. . .?"

"Ohgawd. I'm **so** sorry, Stacker. It's not **really** that bad, is it?"

"Ask Tendo. **He's** the one that gets to listen to them sounding off more than anyone else -- that man has the patience of a saint, he truly does. He actually seems to find it **amusing."**

"Better him than me. **\--Squirrel."**

They didn't talk about The Movie for **many** reasons, only one and that the least of which was the levity factor; the fact that it had been the last post-RIMPAC reunion for the four of them before the War made it a memory both sacred and painful for that reason, as well as in itself.

They hadn't expected it at **all** \-- once they had greeted each other, the charms of the hotel bar had swiftly been exhausted, and in the course of poking about on their phones for inexpensive things to do nearby, it turned out that a local small theatre had brought back a well-reviewed animated film which none of them had yet seen -- though Herc's family had told him repeatedly that he needed to watch it -- and it seemed like a good idea at the time.

The traditional ritual-making-of-snippy-comments about the aviation technicals in a flying movie had stuttered and then cut out **completely** , and afterwards they'd only **barely** managed to keep it together when they walked in silence down the street to a little coffee shop with liquor license that had looked pleasant and inviting on their way over.

The bartender had stared at them -- not the usual first moment of **something different** about four military officers in foreign uniforms, that always went along with their entrance into any place that wasn't a typical service bar, nor the secondary bafflement of trying to figure out what their **relationship** was, were they two couples or two sets of siblings or what? much less the unpleasant assessing look that meant there was going to be **trouble.**

Instead she'd exclaimed, "Oh my God, is something **wrong?** Did something **happen?** Were you at **a wake?** Can I get you **water?"**

"No, we **just** got out of a film," Tamsin had replied with tight defiance, and the local woman's face had flashed over with sudden understanding.

"Oh, **you** saw _Up!_ I cried **so hard** when I saw it -- honestly, I cry **every time** I watch it," and they'd spent the rest of the night talking about it, laughing and sniffling and sharing their favorite parts and how they wished it could have gone, with everyone in the place ending up chipping in too.

And now they two were the only survivors of that pleasant Californian evening...

After a moment Herc added, "I know we try to avoid excess rules and regs in the Corps, but do we need to **think** about putting a general No Brass Instruments In The Shatterdome order in place?"

"If we do, then the Corps' got worse problems than we can **guess** at. I honestly **don't know** what to do with 'em, I can't get them to take **anything** seriously! --Herc, they sang 'Bohemian Rhapsody' **all the way** to the last distance Drop. All the way **through**. All the way **there**. All of LOCCENT Anchorage **did it with them."** He paused, because the next part was almost impossible to contemplate, let alone describe.

"In **Muppet voices,** Herc. _**Muppet. Voices."**_

For once his old friend had no comeback for him, none whatsoever.

"I always thought the words **'bad influence'** were something that **old codgers** said to divide and conquer. This -- I **nearly** said the word 'tomfoolery' there, that's what these children have **done** to me! Gyrfalcon Group **cut their recievers** because they were afraid they might crash. Peregrine said it was **very** good practice for concentrating under **battle conditions.** You'd better **believe** I got an earful and then some."

"Well. --Maybe you could offer a **bargain** \-- no more Conn-Pod comedy routines in **exchange** for a tuba?"

 **"No _rewarding_ of bad behavior** \-- **you** know that just as well as **I** do! They followed 'Bohemian Rhapsody' with 'We Will Rock You' **and** 'God Save The Queen' **from** the same album, which as I'm sure you recall, is an **instrumental cover.** They sang it anyway. **If** you can call that singing."

It can be difficult for the human face to convey both extreme sympathy and the barely suppressed impulse to howl with laughter. Somehow, Ranger Hansen managed **both.**

"Still as Muppets?"

"I know you **have** to talk about something, you can't just **sleep** your way to a distance Drop, but -- you **don't** have to put it on the loudhail frequency! You don't have to bloody well sing **'Bohemian Rhapsody'** in **Muppet voices!"**

"You need to improve their taste in music, **that's** what."

_**"Herc."** _

"Just tryin' to **help!"**

 **"Please** don't. It'd serve Yancy right if I **did** give his brother a bugle. --Oh, did y' get those morale patches for Chuck already? They **should** have come down in the pouch with the last hardcopy backups from Tokyo."

"Yes, thanks, got 'em this morning, I'm sure he'll appreciate them -- what **are** they, d'ye know? I couldn't **tell** what they're supposed to be, **most** of 'em."

"Latest series of Pokemons, I believe. Too bad **they're** not real, we could summon them to frighten off the Kaiju."

"Too right! They are pretty terrifying -- did you ever **see** those ANA paint jobs? With the grinning yellow beastie? **Not** something you want to have lookin' over the wing at the crack of dawn, proper _Twilight Zone_ turn **that** was."

 _ **"Yes,"**_ the Englishman winced. It was a grim memory.

"Worse than a Cheshire Cat! Say, wasn't it _**your boys** _ who pulled that **prank** at the Academy, repainting the Kaiju all happy little giant **cartoon** animals in the sim?"

"So much for **not** talking about work," Pentecost sighed. "Yes, **it was.** "

"I'm sorry, but -- you **should** have seen it coming, Stacker."

"I know." A deepest of sighs said it all.

In the distance, a voice almost jarringly familiar yelled, _**"Herc!**_ Showtime in **twenty!"**

"Whoops, gotta run -- we've got Network Ten comin' in here for a **feature** now."

Pentecost sighed, even more deeply, if that was possible.

"I'm **_so_ sorry.** They're going to call you the **'ranga ranjahs'** again, aren't they?"

"Well, if they **don't,** I owe you a bottle of Clout Stout. But I 'xpect we'll crack that old victory bottle of Xoriguer first, the day **your** media finally lets on they're **aware** that you're not white. Like, what, d'they think nobody'll **notice** if they just **don't _mention_ it?** In spite of them goin' on about how **blue-eyed** your boys are every chance they get--"

"It's the Americans. They **may** just see it as _ **being polite."**_

Hansen gave him a comically dubious glare, scrunching his eyebrows and biting his lip.

"Stacker. This is **the press** we're talkin' about. The **same** press that **always asks--"**

"I know. I **know.** \--I **wish** I could make them stop **calling** you that."

"Oh, it dun' bother me **really** \-- I just wish they'd spend as much time quotin' me on why we need to **expand** the Shatterdome network, **not** keep stretchin' what we've **got** , as they do **talkin' about my _arse."_**

 **"Good luck,"** the Marshal replied gloomily, not ever being one to pretend outcomes were rosier than they were.

The distant shouting started up again, "Christ, Herc, are you **still** on the line with that Pom bastard? Do **I** have to **do everything** around here?"

"Sorry, gotta run," his friend said with that unconscious grimace of embarrassment at his brother's friction-causing personality that was more a part of him than ever, now. But Scott wasn't **his** problem, thank God, and it wasn't for **him** to come between Gred and Forge either...

"So, um, _**Marshal?"**_

 **"Yes,** Mr. Becket?" The tone of his voice and his expression each alone would have deterred nearly every older Corps member, military veterans in particular, but his junior pilot was far too innocent -- or too wise to him, not sure **which** \-- to take **any** sort of warning from the chill.

"So I was talking to Kim Metgzer-Villarosa, you remember **her**? Term ahead of us?"

"I do," wondering where this was going. As he recalled, the two of them had briefly been an item, a pairing so **actinic** that, as another instructor had put it, it was like staring into twin suns, if the suns were made of marmalade kittens on catnip made of pure sugar -- no fear of any jealousy there, Becket senior constantly fleeing their company much in the manner of a mastiff pursued by small balls of fluff with needle-sharp claws, or as he put it, there wasn't enough aspirin in all of **Anchorage** , let alone the Academy, for him to cope with what happened when those two were together!

It hadn't lasted long, but there had been no acrimony in the breakup, and they had stayed, as the cadets put it, "fist-bump buddies" (though on Metzger's side it was more of a "glomp-tackle buddy" situation, really) for the duration, and were evidently casual correspondents still. But **what** they could have to say to each other that would be important enough to interrupt him over at this hour, he didn't dare imagine.

(The actual cause of their calling it quits was much stranger, more anticlimactic, and surreal than they or any of their classmates could ever have explained to any adult; even the witnesses to the whole affair found it somewhat surreal in hindsight, beginning with the cadets who found Yancy Becket camped out on a rec room sofa with his sleeping bag.

"Sexiled?" they teased him.

_**"Worse."** _

When this got only disbelieving jeers, he'd clarified that the culprits were currently crammed into Raleigh's bunk using Kim's laptop to record their practice takes **and** potential entries into the semifinal round of the International Super Chibi Neato Neko Slam Dub Competition, English Language Category -- but there was a heated argument going on now over whether either of them was good enough to **also** try for the Japanese Class, or whether they should try to make a virtue of necessity and tackle the hardest category, Bilingual Improv, instead. They **both** felt that the Soundtrack Matching divisions required too much concentration -- too much like classwork -- and just weren't as **funny** to put together, though the results always were delightful to watch and hear.

(The fact that they were also eating Jello straight from the box he **omitted** , since that was pretty much a given with Metzger, who appeard to be fueled purely by powdered sucrose: no one had ever been able to figure out how she could **hold still** long enough to be the almost-perfect marksman in her age group that she was. But it was another sore point, even if it wasn't **his** bunk full of blueberry Jello crystals and thus not his laundry problem. Sugar on the floor had **always** been a particular peeve of his, and he'd thought that eating out of a mess hall would take care of that bit of fraternal sloppiness, but no such luck.)

"No, you don't understand. I **cannot take ONE MORE MINUTE** of my brother and his girlfriend doing **STUPID CAT DIALOGUE** in **STUPID VOICES** in **ANY LANGUAGE OF THIS PLANET,** I can't be in the **same ROOM** with this let alone trying to **sleep** right on top of it. This is **DAY FOUR** of them prepping for the finals, and I'm going to **hitchhike** **home** to the mainland if I have to listen to another **"NEEEEKO SAAAAAAYS _WHUT?"_** from either of them."

His lament didn't **quite** fall on deaf ears, but the sympathy was not quite all it should have been.

Since the age range of new recruits was quite broad in the PPDC, the response varied from older trainees who had never **heard** of the newest cult game show, a joint Russo-Japanese production that had started out as a webcast grassroots phenomenon before it was noticed by the big leagues and sponsored by TV channels in five countries now, to younger ones who had memorised **all** the winning vid scripts, with various degrees of bafflement across the board.

(There were also older trainees who had helped write some of the original crowdsourced scripting hacks for the show and younger trainees who couldn't have told you who "ignoramusky" or "shironekoshiro" were if their chances of piloting a Jaeger depended on it, to be perfectly fair. They did pick up the show's catchphrase pretty quickly, though, to Yancy's increased dismay. --He **really** should have seen that one coming!)

It was something that New York and London tastemakers continued to not only be **baffled** by, but to deny the **very existence of** , as though it were also as much of a fiction as certain skeptics insisted the Kaiju themselves to be. More wishful thinking, perhaps -- not that the show itself, nor even the phenomenon that had prompted it, could do a damn bit of good against the Kaiju, but the international silly cat video culture had done more to promote cooperation without borders over the years than **any** of past generations' ponderous talk of detente and doomsday devices -- and so could be said to have had more impact on the formation of the Jaeger Program than all the political talk shows put together.

On the one hand, it was hard to believe -- no matter what the media told you -- that someone was completely alien, _**inscrutable** _ even, when you were both laughing yourselves sick at the same funny cat videos online; on the other hand, if someone who'd sent you the best cat videos they could find, was then to **ask** something of you, or told you something was **important** , well -- you already _**knew** _ they were reliable people and all-round good folks, didn't you?

"Did we **miss** the Spanish semifinals already?"

"Wait, Kim has **Raleigh Becket** in a bunk and they're _**watching silly cat videos?"**_

"Wait, you're **all** missing the point," Sergei's countertenor cut through the din. "It's the semifinals of the International Super Chibi Neato Neko Slam Dub Competition **and** _**we're not watching it?!"**_

 **"Ahaaah--"** Yancy fell backwards on the floor mats and pulled his sleeping bag hood down over his face.

"It's **WORSE** than that," Marissa ranted, "it's the Super Chibi Neato Neko Slam Dub Finals _**and we're not COMPETING in it!** _ Where is your **honor** , oh junior Pan Pacific Defense Corps? Can we leave it ALL to Kim and Raleigh? ** _Aux barricades, mes amis!"_**

 _ **" 'Vot idyoht koht!' "** _ cried Sergei; after a moments' fumbling the other cadets got the stream up on the "big board," Hiroko sorting out the signup logins for everybody while the senior Becket brother crept away discreetly, sleeping bag in hand, for safer territory.

He was eventually discovered snoring across the seats in a half-dismantled 'Hawk waiting for a new rotor array from which he refused to budge, **or** to go back to his assigned bunk again, **ever**. (At least until his third cup of coffee.)

"Yep, livin' in a **hellercopter** these days," he proclaimed to the flight crew in an old codger voice, "it's not **so** bad once ye get **used** ter it -- quieter 'n those **dorms,** honest!"

But the flame of passion had died; something about **almost** making it to fifth tier in the Freestyle Challenge had left them not **cold** to each other so much as **burnt out** in the wake of that celebratory exhilaration, and brought them to the daylight realization that there was only **so far** and **so long** a shared love of athletic sex, silly cat videos, and trying to make each other shoot orange juice out your noses could take you in a relationship. You couldn't live your whole life on a roller coaster, either -- but it sure had been **fun** while it lasted!

\--Long after the Breach was closed, Corps Guard Leader Metzger-Villarosa would live on in oral tradition -- for the PPDC did not rely solely on immobile, frangible stone and metal,  be it marble or silicon, bronze or gold electroplate, to memorialize its dead -- whenever the rolls were called for Absent Friends and "Leaves from the Vine" was sung together with "Nothing To My Name," "Parting Glass," and all the other old songs, for her actions in defusing the "Ark Secret" / 'Dome-closing riot in Los Angeles with a minimum of casualties on all sides of the conflict; the attempt to reduce tensions by repositioning local Corps members in their home territories during the mothballing operations could in a sense be said to have been successful, but the price had been high.

The PPDC named her among the countless heroes of the War, though the US government considered her a traitor still, and the only excuses her family in Michigan made were to say that she had been unbalanced and distraught since her husband's helicopter crash not too many weeks before. Fernando Villarosa-Metzger was remembered with the rest of Jumphawk LA-30's crew for their successful attempt to decoy a Kaiju from the escape pods of a downed Jaeger during a joint action off Panama.)

"Well, she and Ferni are at Hong Kong now."

"I **know**. I signed their transfer request."

"Oh right. Well, we were chatting, and she **happened to mention** that one of **their** LOCCENT watch officers has a set of **bagpipes**. --Under her **desk.** "

After a moment, Pentecost asked, " **Why** are you calling to tell me this at this **hour** of the **night**?"

 _ **"Wellll--"**_ The eloquent handwave said that he was supposed to figure it out and do the Obvious Right Thing.

"Ranger Becket, **did** you expect me to say, "Why then, **of course** you shall have your **tuba!'**?"

"Uh -- _ **yeah?"**_

Hope was a beautiful thing. **Most** of the time.

**"No."**

"But Sir, **WHY**? Why not, I mean?"

A lesser CO would have said, **"Because this isn't Hong Kong,"** and made a strategic error by doing so, or even possibly, "Because it's **almost two in the morning,"** and made a worse one; Marshal Pentecost said instead, "The pipes are a **reed instrument.** I already **told** you, you could have a woodwind -- but **you** rejected that compromise, for reasons I **fail** to comprehend."

"But--"

Pentecost **loved** touchpads because they allowed him to appear even more omniscient than his formidable memory permitted; a few quiet whisks along the glass and he had called up all the relevant personnel file notes.

"Jamie Tan's pipes are an heirloom set **given her** by her great-grandfather James Ross, who **piped at El Alamein** \-- which means, **he stood there** and let Rommel's Afrika Korps shoot at him **while he couldn't shoot back,** to keep his comrades' spirits up **and** them from getting lost in the desert. She carries them **in honour of Mr. Ross,** who died of a heart attack age 98 years, whilst helping **direct evacuation efforts** during the first Hong Kong incursion. I am also **reasonably** certain that she **does not** play them when people are trying to **sleep."**

Like most lectures, most of this flew right past without leaving a dent.

 **"Oh!** Know **what** , Marshal? I can play the Colonel Bogey March on the **trombone** , too! That's from World War Two, right?"

"Becket."

"I'm **really** good at it--"

"Becket. _**No."**_

_**\--So help me, you are NOT going to play that lying triumphalist trash under MY roof, you young idiot!** _

"You can ask **Yancy--"**

 **"Becket!** It is **0200 hours** in this time zone, less seventeen minutes."

"--Oh. Sorry."

"Go to **bed."**

 **"Okay,** Sir. _ **Geez!** _ Hey, if I got **a mute** for it--?"

"Do **not** beg me for a tuba **again**. Or a sousaphone, trombone, trumpet, cornet or bugle, **do** you **copy** , Ranger?"

This got only a heavy sigh, an exaggerated eye roll and shrug, and a reproachful slumping of shoulders at the webcam before the Jaeger pilot signed off.

_**Nearly nineteen years old, and begging for a noisemaker like a child in front of a candy shop-- not that I've ever personally known ANY children who dared beg like that!** _

Marshal Pentecost stared gloomily through the rotating Breach thermal-colorized current display on his monitor and marveled at the fact that he dared to send a young man off to his bunk "with a flea in his ear" who controlled, with his slightest thoughts, half of **more** than enough horsepower to crush Boney and all his strength at Waterloo and Trafalgar combined in the blink of an eye -- and then he laughed out loud at the grand absurdity of it all, and the simple bonds of trust and affection that held it all together.

_**\--Be careful what you wish for, isn't that how it always goes? Wish for an army unlike any other, one where camaraderie and honour and defending the innocent weren't ALL manipulative lies -- wish for the power to protect OTHER children from the same dashing of illusions and the cruel ideal of "break them down to build them up right!" -- and you just might GET that wish, given the Universe's sense of humour. . .** _

After a few minutes' research he sent Raleigh Becket a followup message:

 **ADDENDUM: LIST TO INCLUDE FRENCH HORN, ENGLISH HORN,**  
STIERHORN, FLUGELHORN, EUPHONIUM, BASS  & CONTRABASS  
VERSIONS OF ANY/ALL PRIOR NAMED ITEMS. THIS LIST MAY BE  
EXPANDED IN THE FUTURE AT ANY TIME. IF YOU HAVE TO ASK,  
THEN DON'T.

_**can i have a conch its not metal i can get one thru sd sid next wk if ok w u sir?** _

**ASK YOUR BROTHER, RANGER.**

**:-/**

**FURTHER ADDENDUM: ADD 'ALPHORN' TO THE LIST.**  
 **YES, I AM AWARE THAT IT IS MADE OF WOOD AND**  
 **THEREFORE NOT TECHNICALLY A 'BRASS' INSTRUMENT.**  
 **TRUST ME, YOU WOULD THANK ME FOR THIS IF YOU**  
 **KNEW WHAT I KNOW.**

_**hye sir u forgot foxhorn & posthorn lol** _

**BECKET. GO. TO. BED.**

**DO WHAT THE MAN SAYS, RALEIGH! GET OFF THE SYSTEM NOW,**  
 **AND STOP LOOKING UP SYNONYMS FOR 'HORN,' YOURE NOT GETTING ONE!**

_**lol rite shut up ur not the boss of m** _

Pentecost made a note of the time and waited.

It was exactly 6 minutes before the desk speaker **SCREEE'd** and a familiar voice cried plaintively, "Marshal, **make** him give me back my tablet! How am I s'posed to study these **tech updates** without my **tablet?"**

He didn't even sigh this time, when he hit the MUTE button.

"Uh-huh," LOCCENT's chief gave his boss a quizzical look, "and what if he'd **called** your bluff and gone for the bagpipes? **Would** you let him take 'em up?"

"I'd have **had** to. "

"Yancy would murder you **twice over,** for that."

"Yes -- but it would be **worth** it. Have you **ever** _**seen** _ someone learning -- **trying** to learn a double-reed instrument? It'd make up for _**everything**_."

"I thought you **liked** the Beckets, Sir?"

"What? Lad's **bored** , clearly needs a new **challenge**. Is that the new issue of _Time_ you've got there?"

"That it is. I'm...glad you're on **our** side, I really am."

"What are you talking about? There's only **one** side **these** days, Tendo."

"Oh, right. I keep forgetting," as he tapped FWD and sent Pentecost's tablet yet another editorial about the poor ROI of the Jaeger Program and how it shouldn't fall to America to shoulder the entire burden of saving the world, _**again**_. "Have some nice fresh **vitriol** \-- goes **great** with coffee, doncha think?"

This was enough to distract Marshal Pentecost completely from any antics the Beckets might conceivably conceive of.

"Are they -- did you **read** this, how this -- this _**person"**_ (he made it sound worse than the worst of curses, somehow) "--suggests that it might be a **good** **thing** for the U.S. economy to be forced to give up its 'crippling dependency on foreign trade' -- do they have _**any idea?"**_

"Nope. **Anyone** can be a pro writer with the right connections now. No fact-checkers either, too expensive. You don't even have to open your articles for comments -- most **don't,** any more."

He sighed.

" 'Course they're mostly full of Kaiju Cultists and Nu-Illuminati these days, so I do **sympathize** , because ... well, **I** wouldn't want to have to delete all those hundreds of **'ITS THE LIZARDS, STUPID!' -- 'NUH-UH!'** posts either. But **nothing** gets through their splendid isolation. Ism."

"That's not **sarcasm** , is it?"

"Oh, no. Nah, I don't **do** that, it's too **popular** now. Everybody's being all sarcastic," he lifted his hands from the glass with a brief mocking flourish of fingers, "thinking sarcasm's still cool --  they need to **wait** a while before reviving that, I'm just **saying."**

"Very true. So...this writer with a degree in Economics from... _ **Cambridge,**_ apparently, thinks it'll be **perfectly fine** if all the container ships stop crossing the Pacific. Hmh." He shook his head sadly. "I keep telling myself not to expect Americans, and I **do apologize** for generalizing, but it's true -- to have a sense of what happens when the shipping just **stops** , but I **do** expect better of my fellow Britons. Even the ones too young to remember the War," -- like himself, but like most military personnel, and children of military personnel, he didn't count himself in that number. "Even **Economics** **students** , for that matter."

"Well...they don't **work** with the Port Authority, do they? They don't have **any idea** how many boats it takes to bring all their toys over, or what's **involved** getting them into and out of harbors. Nor do they **wish** to." The look Pentecost's chief intel officer gave him with these words was unusually bare of any humourous edge.

The Port of San Francisco had been too small before its destruction to handle the biggest vessels any more, but there had been a great deal of smaller and more diversified cargo passing through to complicate the daily lives of ferry pilots, before the day that did what the Great Quake **nor** the fire following hadn't managed, and wrecked the Ferry Building that had protected the city's roofless and supplied them water from across the Bay till more permanent shelters had been made available, a long century ago.

No matter how stressful that post of such unglamorous responsibility had been, before the War, and no matter how valuable and valued the LOCCENT posting was, there was nothing **either** of them wouldn't give never to have **needed** to have known or worked together, and both of them knew it, and so they never had to speak of it.

"And they don't see it coming to bite **them** , eventually?"

Choi raised both hands spread in a gesture that conveyed both non-responsibility and incomprehension.

"I got nothing, Sir. **Not** a **thing."**

At least his Rangers understood more about world politics than the professional tastemakers and conceptual gatemakers of the Atlantic media -- and wasn't **that** a terrifying thing in itself?

When he was feeling reasonable about it (which was to say, when they weren't **actively doing something idiotic** in front of him and making him consider that the Jaeger Academy with all its new recruits' vast range of age and experience only **just** balanced out the difficulties of the Anchorage Shatterdome, on his list of responsibilities) he acknowledged that part of the problem was that nobody in positions of authority had ever expected any successes of the Beckets, at all; that only their music and theatre teachers had even **cared** what they did in the slightest, and even those hadn't felt it worth **their** while to invest the sort of effort that children with such economic and personal disadvantages would have needed to excel there, as the pre-War world understood things. Life (and more particularly, economic policies far beyond their ken) had destined them to be affable layabouts, drifting from manual job to dole to manual job to friends' or relatives' sofas, like so many others -- energy should be spent on those with a chance of succeeding, everyone understood, without a word being said on the subject.

That an accident of birth had meant this was **not** seen as a problem, much less a threat, to be **preempted** \-- well, **that** wasn't their fault either...

 

Raleigh himself could not **say** what it was about his fierce yearning for a brazen voice that was so demanding, why the impulse to shout through a complex amplifier not of electronic artifice but the ancient art of smithing should be so strong.

The foghorn's best, since it has all the reverb of electronics **and** the mechanical amplifying bell -- but he isn't allowed to test the foghorn in the bays, and he really does know better than to try it anyway. (But that time there was a short in the system and she sounded by herself during maintenance? **THAT HAD BEEN _SOOOO_** **AWESOME** \-- at least since nobody got hurt besides a few bumps and sprains from startle reaction. If anyone had fallen off the scaffolding it would have been different, of course.)

All he knows is that he needs a horn, even a little dinky bugle would be better than **nothing** , when he can't be striding through the waves, patrolling the coast when movement has been reported, even though most of the time it's false alarms. It's something visceral, something that just feels **right** , without having a scientific name for it.

But the _Song of Roland_ wasn't assigned in his freshman or sophomore English classes (in fact since it was was only covered in the advanced level English classes, he never **would** have, either, even if he hadn't dropped out to enlist, unless one of his more-academically-successful friends had pressed it on him with enthusiastic accolade -- and what he knows of the legend of the Siege Perilous comes entirely from _Excalibur_ and Monty Python, and his knowledge of Wagner nearly entirely from _Bugs Bunny._

(There was a term paper for Music History elective once, but he got so tangled in the thickets of musical scholarly writing and its obfuscations of inconvenient history that it was more of a jumbled mess of run-ons, half-finished thoughts and barely rewritten paragraphs not matching any of the other sentence fragments. This **wasn't** helped by the fact of Mr. Dunwoodie, the Music History teacher, refusing to allow his students to use the internet, insisting that the _**only**_ valid knowledge to be gained was in books printed **on paper** , and so the only source texts were about 40 years behind current scholarship or instructional style. None of it survived the week, let alone the semester.)

But it doesn't matter that he doesn't **know** that there is a long and storied tradition of the Horn of Challenge hanging on the Oak bedecked with the shields, and sometimes corpses, of the Knight Errant's predecessors, or that a trumpet solo of such coruscating vivacity heralds the arrival of young Siegfried Dragon-Slayer in the _Ring Cycle_ that if he'd ever **heard** it -- Mr. Dunwoodie wasn't fond of sound samples either, and preferred to use the overhead projector display to elucidate his lectures with clips of sheet music instead -- he would have tried to play it himself no matter it wasn't written or scored for his instrument and the tuba is unwieldy for such virtuouso performances, far better suited for staying in the background, steady and reliable and deep as the seabed itself -- or for musical practical jokes.

He never says out loud that whenever he slams his thumb into the Foghorn button, no matter all the jokey shouts about big trucks powering down the frozen road or **"INCOMING!",** that the thought in his head is always Boromir sounding the Horn of Gondor as they set out from Rivendell in the cold gray light of the waning year, or that Yancy's is always the "great horns from the North, wildly blowing" at the Siege of Gondor, riding to the rescue against the Lord of the Nazgûl -- they **never** speak of this where radio could pick it up, because they don't **need** to, because it is a secret between the three of them.

For Her voice upraised is **theirs**.

And when she sings into a storm or the endless sighing of the unlashed seas, and the Enemy rushes to meet her as gladly, roaring back defiance against defiance, flinging themselves into an embrace ferocious yet strangely innocent of cruelty, their combined chorale is like the deep baritone horns of Götterdämmerung, sounding for the end of the time of the Old Gods and the coming of the Dawn by a hand-forged Valkyrie made in humanity's own image and likeness...

Her builders may not have known the truth of **why** they gave this Jaeger a foghorn, but her pilots surely did:

Doom to **Earth?** No --

**DOOM TO THE ENEMIES OF EARTH! DOOM TO THE BRINGERS OF NIGHT!**  
 **DOOOOOOOOOOM! DOOOOOOOOOOOOM! _DOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOM!_**

 

**Author's Note:**

> the title references "The splendour falls from castle walls" by Alfred, Lord Tennyson; Ray Bradbury's "The Fog Horn" story inspired the creation of Ray Harryhausen's "Beast from 20,000 Fathoms" which inspired Ishiro Honda's original "Gojira" back in the 1950s; further notes to follow


End file.
